Four Grammar Rules You Can Break!

I tried to think of five grammar rules you could break; it is a much rounder number for an article such as this. However, being a grammar stickler would allow me to come up with only four I was comfortable with! (And there’s one of them right there!)

1. Ending a sentence with a preposition:

Yes, pretty much everyone says this is a fine thing to do. Sometimes it is definitely the best thing to do, so your sentence doesn’t sound awkward. However, there are degrees to which writers (or speakers) will go when trying to avoid the preposition at the end of the sentence.

This is something I won’t put up with!

This is something with which I won’t put up!

I would choose the first one!

Whom are you going with?

With whom are you going?

Most people would choose the first one here, but I would actually (every since I became the Grammar Diva) say the second one. Totally up to you! I probably sound stuffy saying it my way, but so be it! Oh, yes, most people would also say “who” instead of “whom,” but that is not a grammar rule I recommend breaking. That broken rule comes from simply not knowing which is which. I have written posts on the difference between who and whom, so you can refer to those.

Oh, then there is this one:

Where are you?

Where are you at?

Please don’t end your sentence with at when you don’t need a preposition at all!

2. Starting a sentence with a conjunction (And, But, So)

Okay, I will relent on this one, but for creative writing only, not in a business letter. Others, I know, disagree. I still think that conjunctions go after the comma in a compound sentence:

I have to finish my report, and then I can help you.

Sometimes it does make sense to use the conjunction more as a transition word to begin a sentence, but I prefer that it be for effect in something that is not formal.

She was alone on a dark street. And then she heard footsteps quietly approaching from the distance. She kept going, quickening her pace. But the footsteps matched her faster pace.

Okay, fine. I agree it does have a positive effect in the above example! But (uh-oh) I don’t like this one:

I believe I am qualified for this position. And I have the appropriate education.

3. Using their as a singular pronoun.

Webster now says it’s OK, so I guess it is OK. And it avoids the awkward phrase “his or her,” since the English language has no singular form for this phrase.

Everyone needs to bring his or her book to his or her math class.

Pretty unwieldy, huh? Most people have been using their instead of his or her for ages. But it isn’t really correct. Although everyone sounds plural, it isn’t. You say “everyone is,” right? And is is a singular verb. So the pronoun (his or her/their) should also be singular, since it refers back to everyone.

So, now you can use their in the singular. I still don’t like it. I wouldn’t use it in a cover letter. I wouldn’t recommend using it on a college essay. The best thing to do, in my opinion, is just to rewrite the sentence to avoid the entire problem:

Everyone needs to bring the math book to class.

4. Using sentence fragments. Here is my rule for using a sentence fragment (a group of words that is not a complete sentence):

If you know you are using a fragment and you have a good reason, go ahead and use it.

Sentence fragments are popular in promotional writing, novels, and other creative writing. They are not great in business letters or when the person reading what you have written could mistake you for someone who doesn’t know what a complete sentence is!

I looked at her. All legs and blonde hair.

Of course the second “sentence” in the example is a fragment. But it works.

So, hard as I try, I can’t think of another rule that can be broken! Can you? But I bet you can find me breaking these rules all over this blog post!

Here is a book that is coming soon!

Comments

If anyone worries about starting sentences with And or But, I always refer them (him or her!) to the book of Genesis, which in the King James begins nearly every single sentence with And or But. If it was good enough for God/and or King James, who am I to quibble with it?

Dear Diva and all ,
No matter how many times I read or hear the rule about ME and I, neither sound right to me anymore due to my fear of saying/writing it wrong. (same thing as in spelling breath and breathe).

It frightens me to oabserve that that which we considered correct and the inability to use that we want to popularize grammar to make it fit to our indivdual purposes. A poet and a novelsit may have artistic licence but business do not. The fact that a fast food company challenges the i instead of I-form confuses those who want to start learning a language. I fear is commercialized without retaining the beautiy of the language. Whenever we find something difficult we tend to avoid it or make suitable to our needs. However, it needs be that grammar should be taught in such a manner that English language learners are able to make complex sentence structure. If we are unable to teach the basics, I fear that we turn to a me Tarzan and you Jane English. I hope we have progressed from that.

When I was in school, we were drilled on the difference between “shall” and “will”–and when to use each. The distinction was very important to my teacher. I think about that distinction often when I am editing a manuscript. The rule was fussy even back then, and it did little (or nothing) to enhance clarity or punch.

Far more useful are recommendations such as “keep the modifier close to the word it modifies.” There’s a reason for a recommendation like that. Whereas one would be hard put, I think, to support the rule that sentences should not begin with conjunctions. (Read the Bible lately?)

Most of these exceptions don’t have to do with written language. They have to do with using spoken language in a written context, for tone or emphasis. Eliot had the right idea: ‘It’s not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them.’

Great discussion! I’ve written thousands of words for publication, and I admit i’ve broken every one of those grammar rules at least 10 times (especially in my fiction). However (!), I still feel guilty when I end a sentence with a preposition, and struggle to rewrite every time. I agree–sometimes it just SOUNDS better. The use of “their”, which is commonplace these days, isn’t a bit bothersome, but I’ve been known to split infinitives with a hatchet. Oh, how to deal with the guilt! Mrs. Shenkel, my 7th grade teacher, was responsible for drumming “the rules” into us. Somewhere in that big classroom in the sky, I know she’s scowling and wielding a red pencil…

Prepositions – I’m reminded of the old Churchill anecdote in which he made a margin comment on an official document in which someone was decrying some misuse of the English Language (it may even have been ending sentences with prepositions). Churchill remarked. “Quite right. This is a situation up with which I will not put” !

And what about the split infinitive? I used to correct my children but was always told that English is an evolving language and if it wasn’t we’d still be speaking Early English! Difficult to challenge but I became a convert to selective use of split infinitives when I first heard the phrase (I think in Starship Enterprise . . . To boldly go where no man has been before” – or something very similar – so much more elegant than “To go boldly . .”

I guess I don’t really get why “his or her” is “awful.” The phrase doesn’t really require a lot of extra space on a page or breath to vocalize, and it shows a sense of awareness on the part of the speaker or writer of the need to include one or the other roughly half of the species. I agree that, if overused, it becomes farcical; but the occasional “his or her,” “he or she,” and “his or hers” here and there just seems part of the wonderfully dynamic evolution of English whirling dervishness.

I know. I do use it. I find nothing wrong with it. However, the other day I found that it would have had to be used twice in the sea sentence and that sounded just plain weird, so I suggested a rewrite.

I’ve often switched to second person to avoid some of this awkwardness. In Pete’s example, “Students, bring your books to class.”

As writers, our aim is for people to understand what we are trying to say. We don’t want our language and usage get in the way, and we want to avoid looking like uneducated dolts.
Grammar rules should support these. If they don’t, we should change them.

Use of “their” as a singular. English (as she is spoke) does not have a gender neutral singular pronoun. I suspect that you can recall when “more inclusive language” became a big issue some 20+ years ago, or so.

As it happened, I attended the Stanford Professional Publishing Course in the 1995 — and one of the class lectures was given by a delightful lady (whose name escapes me now) who was then one of the top editors at Merriam-Webster (publishers of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Merriam Webster Unabridged Dictionary — standards of American English). A discussion of gender neutrality and use of “their” as a singular pronoun came up in the class participation portion of the class.

The analysis boiled down to how our language evolves over time, incorporating new words or new use ages when circumstances dictate. Much of the creation of gender neutral language involved removing “man” from various nouns: chairman becomes chair (which still strikes me as being very awkward); flagman becomes “flagger”, and job titles like deliveryman or postman becomes –person as in delivery person or postal person. (This last is not the same as “going postal.”)

While I still find many of the constructions of gender neutrality grating to the ear, the fact is that writing in a gender neutral manner has become the norm — and most younger people are less bothered with the awkwardness than you or me. Which brings us back to the use of “their” as a singular pronoun when the gender of the reference is unknown (or unknowable), such as “students will bring their book to class.” Merriam-Webster’s “official stance” was that such usage is permitted as the least worse choice among the several obvious constructions. (Believe me, in some documents use of “his or her” or “his/her” gets tiresome very quickly. I’ve also read articles and even books where every such singular pronoun was written as “she” (or “her”). The artificiality of that is more annoying than use of “their” which IS neutral.

If you examine how English is written and spoken today, you’ll see that many speakers do minimize use of gender in their language and “their” is widely accepted as the solution of choice to the his/her he/she problem.

Pete – You are the very person who told me that “their” was an acceptable singular pronoun. I think of you every time it comes up! I agree that his or her is awful, and alternating between his and her is ridiculous! I really like just avoiding the issue. Thanks again for your thoughtful and knowledgable comment!

Many times we talk about grammar in terms of writing. This blog post is about speaking. We don’t need to worry about punctuation when we speak, but we do have to worry about grammar—and pronunciation (which we don’t have to worry about when we write).

A while ago, one of my readers asked me to write a post about my life as a self-publisher. However, before I became a self-publisher (or “indie” publisher, as we like to call it), I was a writer for a very long time. I think most people who write have been writing for most of their lives.